1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cooking apparatus capable of achieving hybrid cooking with high-temperature gas that heats the bottom of a cooking vessel and high-calorie steam that heats the body of the cooking vessel.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional cooking apparatus has a cooking vessel for receiving and cooking food materials and a gas heater arranged under the bottom of the cooking vessel to heat the same. Processes of cooking, for example, frying food materials such as vegetables with the prior art will be explained.
A large quantity of vegetables are charged into the cooking vessel up to the top thereof. The gas heater heats the bottom of the cooking vessel to a high temperature. As the vegetables are fried, they shrink from the top of the cooking vessel toward the bottom thereof and are fried at the bottom with the gas heater.
Frying a large quantity of food materials such as vegetables only with high-temperature heat generated by the gas heater arranged under the bottom of the cooking vessel takes a long time. Namely, it takes a long time to reduce the volume of the food materials to the bottom of the cooking vessel. If a cooking temperature is increased to shorten the cooking time, the food materials will burn and stick to the inside of the cooking vessel.
A water content in the cooking vessel, or the ratio of the weight of water within and around food materials in the cooking vessel to the weight of all materials in the cooking vessel, is an important factor to burn food materials in the cooking vessel, and therefore, it must correctly be controlled during cooking. When boiling down food materials to cook bean paste, sauce, or soup in the cooking vessel, a water content in the cooking vessel greatly affects the taste of the food. Accordingly, the timing of stopping the boiling must correctly be controlled. To achieve this, the prior art forces workers to sample and taste food materials boiled in the cooking vessel carefully. This method frequently destabilizes the quality of a cooked state of the food materials.
To correctly control a water content, workers must always pay attention to the conditions of food materials in the cooking vessel until the completion of cooking and must have masterly skill to manage this. Shortening a cooking time to, for example, a half of a usual cooking time makes the monitoring of water content difficult for workers. A simple carelessness may result in missing a correct water content. Accordingly, the prior art must limit a cooking speed to correctly control a water content.